Neural nets make a comeback at Darpa

PORTLAND, Ore.  All the rage a decade ago, neural networks are making a comeback at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa).

Last year, the agency resurrected efforts to create brain-like electronic circuitry to automatically learn the relevant features and associations needed to recognize objects. Last week, IBM Corp. received a $16.1 million contract from Darpa for a program called SyNAPSE (Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics). The program aims to "break the programmable machine paradigm and define a new path forward for creating useful, intelligent machines," according to a Darpa announcement.

Current systems for pattern recognition of enemy tanks, for example, depend on hand-crafted algorithms, but SyNAPSE aims to automate pattern recognition by mimicking the human brain. According to program manager Todd Hylton, it also aims is to "to develop a electronic neuromorphic machine technology that scales to biological levels."

To achieve ithis goal, researchers need a synapse--the adaptive connection between neurons in the brain that changes values in response to perceived patterns. Synapses change the connection strength between neurons to learn new patterns without traditional programming.

IBM's charter is to develop materials that facilitates the changes that adapt to new patterns, categorize the features that will enable recognition and can interface with conventional computers to provide them with learning capabilities.

Besides developing a working synapse, the project will also simulate synaptic components in special-purpose cores that support the adptaive learning architecture needed for automatic pattern recognition systems.

Let's wish DARPA luck this round... The problem with neural networks is not so much what they can do as what they will do... which is learn the information provided to them, not what you want them to learn. Should I repeat a classic and probably apocryphal story? Oh heck, why not. The goal was to train a self-guided vehicle to navigate along a road. Shouldn't be hard, on each side there is a curb, with nice green grass beyond that, just stay between the lines. Only it turned out that when they took the vehicle outside to prepare for a demo, the light spectrum from REAL grass was nowhere close to pure green used in the laboratory to train the neural navigation logic. Successful demo or lose funding... what to do? Well, to make a long story short, they went out and spray painted all the grass green...